Chapter 107

As for Marquise Lamott, she was closer to the latter than the former. There was a time when she had once been blinded by love, but that was long ago. Having remained at the Emperor’s side through long years, she knew Ebroin V’s true nature well.

He was a man of peerless reason and icy composure. She could not say so aloud, being a concubine, but it was nonetheless the truth. His Majesty, though outwardly ever so gentle and gracious, always kept a part of himself cold and removed, even with his own concubines and children.

That was why she simply could not believe that such a contradictory order had truly come from him: forbidding someone to leave the palace, all the while refusing even to look upon their face. It was far too irrational, too unlike him.

Marquise Lamott turned her head and looked straight into Eugene’s face. No matter how she regarded him, there was nothing especially remarkable about him. He was no incomparable beauty like the Emperor himself or some of the famed young noblemen, nor did he possess the tender, lovely physique one might want to hold close.

Broad shoulders and a taciturn face. His stubborn refusal to adorn himself lent him an air of trustworthiness, but such men were all the more easily grown weary of. And yet, why was it that something impossible for her had been possible for him?

…No matter how she turned it over in her mind, she could not understand. A faint sting of inferiority, long buried, pricked at her from deep within. Impulsively, the Marquise parted her soft lips and posed a question.

“Why was it that only Saint Tefylae was so special?”

She had managed to pose the question,‘Why is it that only you are special?’, in that roundabout way, thanks to the last vestiges of her pride. Eugène met her gaze in silence, his dark, ash-grey eyes clouded like mist.

“I have wondered that for so long. Why was he the only one favored? It is said that Saint Eustace came down to the world to bring civilization to a ruined mankind, is it not? In order to preserve the glory and authority he brought with him, it was necessary that he sire children to carry on his bloodline. So the women sought him out. They lay with him and bore his offspring. In the end, was it not they who fulfilled the work of his divine will? From the first woman, Ostia of the Dawn, to the last in the far North, Estina of the Empty Cradle. Surely it is they who deserve to be truly praised.”

Marquise Lamott began to discuss the scriptures out of the blue. Without warning or context, she began expounding on the shared creation myth of the Ladivenia continent: the tale of Saint Eustace, who returned to the ruined earth and sowed his flame into its women to raise the ashes once more.

But Eugène understood well enough what she truly wished to say. Though he lacked the scholarly refinement common among his peers, he was not so ignorant as to miss the concept of allegory.

“Yet after Saint Eustace ascended, the one who was called up to the heavens with him was his first disciple, and his most beloved, Eromenos, Saint Tefylae. The last human to ascend to the heavens while still alive. The one so dearly loved that he eventually became a god. All glory and praise belong to him. Even now, the world remembers only Saint Tefylae. The women who bore his children and endured alone upon the earth are forgotten, while that love, beautiful and unburdened by sacrifice, is endlessly recalled and repeated. Do you not find that unjust?”

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“… It is said that the work of the gods cannot be judged by the same measure as the work of men.”

According to a few daring theologians, Saint Tefylae was not a real person at all, but rather a native pastoral deity once worshipped on the eastern plains, originally the God of Livestock. That, they claimed, was the reason he was always portrayed as a young shepherd.

Then, as agriculture spread from Shaak, so too did the faith of Saint Eustace, the God of Agriculture. With the decline in the importance of pastoralism, Saint Tefylae, whose role had diminished accordingly, was gradually demoted in rank, eventually reimagined as a mere mortal and absorbed into the new religious framework. That was what those theologians claimed.

That revolutionary and heretical theory had once been recorded in the<Theology of Tradition>, a book that had been listed as forbidden for decades before being only recently unbanned. The fact that Eugène found himself recalling its contents in this moment was surely due to the damage of having spent the entire week buried among musty old archives in the library. After a moment’s thought, he settled on the safest possible reply to sidestep her question.

“Do you speak of the Doctrine of Divine Incomparability?”

“That is correct.”

“But it was not formally adopted asdogmauntil just after the Imperial unification. It took seven long councils to reach that conclusion.”

The Seventh Council of Michèle, was it? While Eugène knew the general outline, he was far from well-versed in the finer details. He racked his brain, trying to grasp why she was drawing out this topic at such length.

She was clearly hinting at something, but unfortunately, his knowledge in this field was too limited to grasp what she was trying to say. He had little interest in theology; at most, he had skimmed the scriptures once or twice. And yet, despite claiming she had no intent to debate history or theology, Marquise Lamott had delved far too deep.

“It was that doctrine, after all, that legitimized the presence of concubines in the imperial family. Is that not fascinating? Not only commoners, but all the other nobles across the empire, even the Prince-Electors of each province, are bound by strict monogamy. Yet de Régis had to accept the system of concubinage simply because he was the Emperor. Just like the barbaric Shaak, would you not say?”

It was only at that point that Eugène began to grasp the direction in which she was steering their conversation. The reason that the Doctrine of Divine Incomparability, which stated that the work of the gods cannot be judged by the same measure as the work of men, had become the central point of contention at the Council of Michèle was due to its entanglement with the deeply complex political and theological debates surrounding the divine right of emperors.

On the continent of Ladivenia, there has long existed the traditional faith of Saint Eustace. This religion, which venerates the heavenly descendant Eustace who returned a once-fallen civilization to mankind, is the dominant faith across the Ladivenian cultural sphere.

According to the scriptures, during the Age of Seram, when the Twelve High Gods ruled the heavens, cunning humans sowed discord among the gods and incited a divine war. They posed the question of original sin to each of their ruling deities:“O beloved mother, who shall govern humanity in place of the Primordial Goddess Saint Régire? We wish to know the name we are truly to revere.”This question, posed with false reverence, stirred pride and jealousy in the hearts of the once-pure gods.

In the end, the ancient gods, each vying for the most glorious throne, fell into strife and waged a long and ruinous war, at the end of which all of them perished.

The humans committed this sin out of a grand ambition to seize the celestial civilization for themselves, free of divine rule. But Saint Régire, the Goddess of Creation and Primordial Mother, did not forgive humanity for making her sons destroy one another.

She shattered the cities of the sky and cast them down into the sea, humans and all. Then she laid a mortal curse upon them:

“Forever be foolish and cruel. All sins you committed against my children shall return upon yourselves. You shall devour one another and rot in your own pride and envy.”

She held not the slightest mercy for humankind and was a Goddess who embodied cruel and merciless fate itself.

Saint Eustace, however, was half-god and half-human. He was moved to pity by the plight of mortals, and descended to the earth without his grandmother, Saint Régire’s, permission, and sparked the embers anew. He brought agriculture and blacksmithing to humanity, who had been living in ignorance upon the barren earth, bereft of civilization. But the earth was cursed by the Goddess, and Saint Eustace, not being a pure god, could not completely lift the curse. As a result, his miracles only extended as far as his footsteps reached.

When this became known, mortal maidens came forward. They sought out the wandering Eustace, knelt at his feet, and received his seed ‘to preserve the embers as one tends the hearth’s flame.’

This legend did not remain merely in the realm of myth. It was frequently employed for political and secular justification. The children of Saint Eustace mentioned in the tale became equated with the ruling classes of various regions, who then used the myth to legitimize their authority. The nobles claimed they were heirs to the divine mandate and sacred duty passed down from the celestial bloodline. As descendants of the God who rekindled the flame of the earth, they proclaimed their right to rule the land.

The issue arose when this logic extended into the doctrine of the divine right of emperors. The belief that ‘a rightful king shall return to rule the entire land’ was a faith with roots stretching back thousands of years. Nobles who claimed traces of divine blood in their lineage began asserting themselves as rightful heirs, revealing their ambition to conquer the continent.

It was for that reason that the wars of unification had been able to continue for centuries without end. The people’s belief in the one true king had been strong enough to endure all those long years of war. They believed that the king would be none other than the rightful heir of Saint Eustace.

“Is the debate over rightful heirs by divine blood not a rather antiquated topic? As I understand it, even among the most conservative theologians, it is no longer earnestly discussed.”

“‘If one is not the rightful heir, then one is merely an illegitimate. If that is the case, would it not mean that all nobles, apart from the House of de Régis, conquerors of the continent, are of illegitimate blood?’What do you think, Baron Amieux? Do you believe, as Cardinal Malacasse and his followers once claimed, that only the Imperial House Ardi can be considered the rightful heirs?”

“Well, in retrospect, it was an argument so violent and inflammatory that it would still be difficult to accept today. It is no wonder the nobility of the time reacted with such fierce opposition. After all, it fundamentally denied the legitimacy of the aristocracy’s claim to rule, which had until then been accepted without question. Had His Majesty de Régis not taken a step back from that debate, the empire might very well have been divided again.”

As though possessed by the spirit of Cardinal Malacasse himself, a vehement defender of imperial authority, Marquise Lamott’s questions were relentlessly direct and provocative. But Eugène had no intention of earnestly discussing the ruling legitimacy of the nobility with one of the Emperor’s concubines in the very heart of the imperial court. He offered only vague and noncommittal replies throughout.

It was not only an unseemly topic to discuss in the palace, but he also had a hunch that nothing good would come out of getting involved with her. On the other hand, Marquise Lamott, who had by now regained composure during the conversation, held on tenaciously, like a shark that had tasted blood.

T/N:Apologies for the delay! Translating these chapters has been a bit of a challenge lately TvT so I would like to thank you all for waiting so patiently while I try to translate these chapters to the best of my abilities. I appreciate all your comments, truly. Thank you so much for reading!